Fog and awe

For the past three days it's been foggy, and today visibility seems to have closed in to well under a hundred metres. You keep on waiting for the greyness to burn off, but I suppose this is the downside of living close to the sea, although I can't recall this happening last year. The temperature hits the dewpoint and bye bye view of Mudge Island. Yet right now the fog appears to be lifting, and not before time. That was getting truly depressing.

Yesterday afternoon Wife and I travelled up to the Galaxy Cinema and spent it watching the latest Bond movie, Quantum of Solace which left me a little stunned with the visual overload during car and rooftop chases. I think I'll have to watch it three or four times to catch all the detail in the various chases. Daniel Craig too seems to be closer to Fleming's literary creation than any of the previous incumbents. He seems to have encapsulated both the brutality and mortality of the role. The sense of violence he brings with him is intense and more tangible.

The opening sequence of the movie reminded me of an incident I witnessed on the entrance to the St Gotthard road tunnel in Switzerland a few years ago, where a car, an Audi TT as I recall, got caught in the blind spot of a big truck. The truck moved over into the exit lane and first pushed the car onto the hard shoulder, then as the hard shoulder narrowed on the exit slip road, began to crush it against the crash barrier while all the time the car was buckling, the windscreen starring, the car driver all the time sounding his horn and shouting. We were on my old Triumph 900 just behind the truck and couldn't believe what we were seeing. Bits and pieces of trim scattering all over the road. Behind, we had to do some fast manouevring to avoid some rather nasty punctures. By comparison, in the movie Bond's Aston Martin got off lightly. The Audi was totalled, finally coming to a scrunched up halt, jammed between the crash barrier and the truck, a third smaller than it was. Fortunately, the driver and his family got out unhurt.

Am currently boning up on Mathematics and Physics as a background to improving my job prospects. It's surprising how much you forget over the years. However, the old learning comes back pretty quickly too. All you need is a little practice and the fog lifts.

Update: Twenty minutes later and the fog is back with a vengeance. Just goes to prove the old Vancouver Island saying; "If you don't like the weather right now, go inside and wait five minutes."